2.5D animation

I read Cinefex a lot, and there is often mention of a version of 3D compositing utilising 2.5D, where some parts are 3D and some 2D, or they'll use "cards" with a flat image on, that can be manipulated in such a way as to not need a full 3D object to get the same result.

Well, I tried something along those lines today. The building here is 3D, but everything else is simple 2D photographs that I've parallaxed in After Effects.

If you imagine that there is a spaceship launching from the landingpad, I think the eye would accept the subtle movement of the environment as being real, what do you think?

Have any of you found good uses for this method of compositing?

File is DivX AVI, 800k

 

Sure, take the hallway scenes before the opera in Episode III as an example. The background is digital and all of the people are filmed straight-on without any camera movement. Or also the Jedi composited into the battle arena in Episode II.

Look carefullly and you can see the slight distortion that gives it away. I've done effects tests with it, its relatively easy to create convincing images.

 

Yeah it does look cool. But people do this all the time with after effects.
in my film I use 3dmax to make models and after effects to move my backplate all the time.



~Rory

 

Lord of the rings used that in like every visual effect shot almost. They went crazey with the matte paintings, I think that helps to sell the look a bit also.

 

I think camera mapping would fall under this category too. While you need something like 3ds max, you can make some cooling looking shots by manipulating a camera through a still photo. It really makes the shot much more interesting.

 

Doing matte paintings or being crazy?

 

Well that's great I haven't seen it mentioned here or on the fanfilms forum, so didn't realise it was commonly done. But then I'm not a voracious reader of either forum, really.

 

This technique was used in Episode I.

 

Okay, I think people aren't understanding what my question was.

I know the big movies use these techniques, though in a much more advanced and elaborate way, but what I was curious about was if fanfilms used these techniques very much, because a lot of them seem to obsess over greenscreen and full 3D CGI environments, but I hadn't heard that they used cheats like using 2D "cards" to simulate 3D.

 

Wow! That looks amazing! The effect is *almost* perfect, and I think there's one (relatively) easy thing you could do to completely sell the shot. The foreground trees look a little too flat, and I believe all you'd have to do is make more layers for them - with a little more depth, perhaps taking it as far down as one layer per tree, just so there's a little more parallax shift. Other than that, flawless work. Keep it up.

 

Oh, well most fanfilms dont at all.

 

Yes, that test only has four layers. I think if it had six or eight layers it'd work perfectly. Also, I'm going to add birds, and a spaceship launching off the panding pad, which will also help (not sure if I'll have the ship cast shadows on the trees, though).

 

could you be a little more specific on how you accomplished that effect? it's really good.

 

I animated the building to move in 3D, saving the frames as 32 bit Targa files to give me a clean alpha channel.

Then I imported it into After Effects, along with a few still images of trees that were cropped in Photoshop around their leafy edges to give me further alpha channel transparency.

I animated each row of trees as a simple plane, two of them sliding them to the left when in front of the building, and two behind the building layer animated moving right. The background is a Terragen landscape that also moves to the right.

Then it was just a case of tweaking to get the timing and perspective working acceptably.